Making meat recipes fun for kids: 5 tips to encourage meat eating

Sometimes it’s not easy giving our kids a balanced diet, particularly when we are blessed with fussy eaters. So, after the success of our post on encouraging your kids to eat vegetables by giving them a little added crunch, we thought we would turn our hands to meat, and come up with some meat recipes that present the meat in fun and interesting ways, so that the kids are keen on eating it.

We have scoured Pinterest, and t’interweb and here we have some wonderful ideas to help make meat recipes that little bit more fun for your kids.

1. Meat can be chewy so cook it slowly

One of the reasons why kids don’t like to eat meat is that it take ages to chew, unless you are eating a £25 sirloin steak of course. Me and my Shadow suggests that using a slow cooker to cook your meats, can really help to encourage your kids to eat it more. The meat simply falls off those bones! Slow Cooker Sweet Aromatic Lamb Tagine is one of her daughter’s favourites

2. Make things a little sweeter

The recipe above is a little sweet so a little more palatable for young mouths, and this is something that we can all do with our meat recipes. Making them slightly sweet, without going overboard, can help your children to get used to the texture of meat, alongside a flavour that they like. These wonderful kebobs from Spoonful are a great example of this. They combine the sweet cherry tomatoes, with a bit of honey and soy sauce glaze. Irresistible even to little hands and mouths!

3. Mix it up with something they love

We are a bit obsessed in the UK with the meat and two veg idea – and there is nothing wrong with that at all. However, sometimes kids just need a bit more than just a cut of meat on their plates – they want something with more than just that texture within in. The answer is to mix up their meat with some of their favourite foods, in sauces with pasta, or in a lovely warming casseroles; perfect for this time of year. There are so many meat recipes that give that extra variety to the palate, why not introduce your kids at a young age to those textures and tastes? Giada da Laurentis has a lovely recipe on her site for Chicken meatballs with pasta which looks perfect to make with your kids.

4. Make the meat look like lots of fun

Dress it up, and give the plate a bit of colour! If you have time, you can really go to town on making your meat look like it tastes irresistible. Unfortunately, kids can be swayed far too much by what their food looks like. Use this to your advantage though, and have a bit of fun with your meat once in a while! How about turning their meat into cupcakes, as Betty Crocker suggests?

Alongside making it more interesting to look at, how about serving it in a new and exciting way – cue Bento boxes? At lunchtimes in particular, these can be a great way to encourage meat eating – just look at how appetising these clown boxes look from Family Fresh Meals.

Meat recipes don’t have to be a faff either – there are some excellent ideas out there for quick and easy meat recipes for toddlers that take a few moments in the kitchen. Try these from The Simmworks Family Blog; most of these ideas can be done with a variety of different meats usually available from some of the great country food shops out there, such as Country Valley Foods here in the UK.

There are some lovely ideas to get you started here – do you have any more? How have you encouraged your little ones to be more adventurous with meat, do let me know below.

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Helen is a mum to two, and social media consultant and website editor. Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts now works with big family brands (including travel) to help them promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. Helen also works part-time as a digital marketing analyst with Channel Mum as well. She can often be found hanging about on social media, and trying to avoid stepping on the Lego her kids keep leaving lying around.